Stories #40 #cong24 #legacy

Reading Time in Minutes

2

1. The best part of funerals are the Eulogies
2. The stories that are told about us when we die are the ones that keep our memories alive.
3. Good stories are memorable and repeatable.

Ex-Advertising Creative Director. Co-author of the ‘Feckin’Series’ of books, ‘Stuff Irish People Love’ and various different humorous books on Irish culture. I also write and direct short films.

I play a little bit of Basketball and spend my spare time hauling my ass over the Wicklow hills on a bike.

You can contact Donal by email or see his work on O’Dea.ie and Remarkable Films

By Donal O’Dea

I don’t like going to Mass.

Week in and week out, it’s pretty much the same thing and, well, for someone with low attention span, it gets tedious.

But funerals, while sad, are different because you’re celebrating the life of a person.

Every one of them are different.

I was at my mother’s last month. She’d reached the grand old age of 92 and her time had come.

For the congregation who had sat through the mass, now was the time for them to get rewarded with some good stories about the deceased.

My brother had written a well crafted eulogy. Easy for me to say, but I think the task wouldn’t have been hard because she had led an interesting life.

And stories he told. Sometimes they were tear jerkingly sad and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Her various achievements wern’t important unless they were wrapped up in a good yarn.

At the end he got a big round of applause.

He did her proud.

My father passed away over 20 years ago. I didn’t get on well with him. He was an alcoholic. He didn’t spend much time with the family but was always getting involved in some mad project that had noting to do with us.

My brother, once again, delivered the eulogy. Cleverly he cast him as a lovable rogue. He told some great stories about his misdemeanours and how although he had died young, he lived life to the full.

People like to be remember favourably. But if they can’t be remembered favourably, they at very least want to be remembered.

I think stories are an important part of how we connect with people when we’re alive. Good stories are entertaining, memorable and repeatable.

Likewise the good stories that are told about us when we die are the ones that keep our memories alive.

The more time we spend creating stories now, the more people will remember us when we’re dead.